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2017 AGM at the University of St. Andrews

This year's Young Academy of Scotland AGM was held by the seaside at the Univeristy of St. Andrews.

We have a wonderful team of St. Andrews members in YAS who organised this year's AGM agenda, and planned some fun social activities for our members so that they could get to know each other better.

Held on the 7-8th September, we had a series of workshop activities and guest speakers over the two days. Highlights included a thought-provoking and inspiring presentation from Dame Professor Anne Glover; a very successful and hard-working workshop from Vice-Principal of the University of St. Andrews, and Professor in Strategy, Brad Mackay; an evening of professional speed-dating; and a welcome from the Royal Society of Edinburgh's new CEO, Rebekah Widdowfield.

There were a lot of exciting advancements and updates for the YAS throughout the two days, including some new strategic developments and some new projects being pitched among members. Some of these highlights are detailed below.

- Small Grants: Our Small Grants scheme for members launched earlier this summer, details can be found on the website here - the grants range from £500-£2000 and are designed to support projects and activities that involve 3 or more members and combine one or more of our strategic framework themes.

- Slack for YAS: We have started using the communications platform, Slack and the management system, Trello within the membership; so far it's been taken up successfully by a large proportion of our members and we hope this will continue to strengthen our internal communications and this will be reflected in the strength and success of future projects.

- Brexit projects: The Brexit Impact Report is due to be published imminently; the report is a compilation of 10 articles from different Young Academy members on different expertise, and the impact the Brexit vote will have on each of these areas for Scotland. The Brexit Observatory case studies are also being prepared for public dissemination and is a collection of case studies from those working in industry, higher education and research who have been affected by the Brexit vote in Scotland.

Thank you to all of our hard-working members, and the St. Andrews team for an incredible two days; and please check out some of the media below from the day.

Our Members

Catherine O'Shea is a British playwright of Celtic-Silesian descent. She began writing on the University of Leeds Theatre Studies course and went on to complete a Masters in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, she also has a PGCE in post-compulsory education from the Institute of Education.